I'm looking for feedback regarding Poser Magnets.

How adept are you at using them?
Do you use them frequently?
Would you use them if only you knew how?

Do these two tutorials help:-
http://www.philc.net/PTB_tutorial4.htm
http://www.philc.net/PTB_tutorial5.htm

I feel it better to encourage, support and educate the novice rather than dumming down created content to such an extent that user creativity is severely impaired. For example if I wanted to provide a model with various sleeve options I could build some morphs into it. However if I am trying to cover every conceivable shape of sleeve then the number of morph dials quickly becomes unusable. My thinking is that it is far better to show how they can create their own design to their own requirements.

The user puts more of their own creative force into it and as a result gets a greater reward out of it.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

PhilC

Ive been a poser user since ver3, and struggled in the beginning, many years ago, as there werent any tutorials on the subject, so I ended up using Travelers morph targets he'd created from the old morphworld... but slowly ended up teaching myself, as I reckon Im now pretty adept at it, and do prefer to create my own custom morphs, as oposed to using someone elses, which I do quite frequently...

Ive checked out your tutorials, and I think theyre theyre great... explaining from the concept stage through to more advanced... I reckon If I were a newbie, I wouldnt be flooded with jargon and not understand a word. Very usefull...

PhilC, your tutorials are valuable for Poser users who perfer going about things from first-principles.

Sure, there will be others who need to hit the ground running in their projects, and perhaps will prefer just the solution to their specific need, rather than fiddling with a whole bunch of magnets or creating custom morphs.

Been in both situations, and depending on need, will either use basic magnets or resort to using someone else's relatively sophisticated "middle-ware" solutions.

Cheers,

Quote - I feel it better to encourage, support and educate the novice rather than dumming down created content to such an extent that user creativity is severely impaired.

I fully agree. "Creative" comes from "to create", not from "to purchase".

I've had these bookmarked since I found them on your site a while ago, Phil, and am, slowly but steadily, learning how to create my own custom morphs.

The tutorials are wonderful and very easy to follow and I'll get it down one of these days, when RL stops interfering ... lol.

I like using existing morphs on figures, since they seem to lead to "organic" results, and like having clothing which supports the same morphs. For clothing, I like morphs to support major style changes (for example, whether the collar on a shirt is button down or not, or whether a coat has pockets. I'm trying to figure out how to use magnets correctly since it helps with seated figures. (I'm working on a scene with a frock coat hung over a chair back -- the tails should drape on the floor. The coat is stiff enough material that it might not be worth making it dynamic cloth.

My biggest issue with using magnets is: They get in the bloody way!!!!

You have half a dozen mags around the character and it all gets messy.

Of course it could be that I'm not used to using them 'cos I'm lazy!!!

How adept? Not very. Magnets are scary.

Do I use then frequently? Um, nope... I avoid scary things.

Would i use them if only i knew how? Probably, it's just that scary thing... did i mention magnets are scary?

I've used the tutorials (thanks for them btw) and i've managed to reduce the scarification factor from an '18' certificate to a 'PG13' . The results were interesting but didn't leave me briming with confidence in my abilities. Technical terminology tends to hit my panic button.

Jack

How adept? Somewhat, I have created 1 morph with them, and fitted a clothing item to a morphed figure. So I've gotten the gist of how to use them.

How frequently do I use them? Not very, but then I haven't needed too that much.

Would I use them if only I knew how? I know a little bit, and would probably use them more if I knew more about them, but there are far too many tutorials that simply showcase the tool instead of giving a good reason to follow it, something like "How to use magnets to make a clothing morph so clothes fit morphed figure X" I think would help a larger number of people than "Here's the tool, this is what it does".

The second is more informative, but doesn't really give you a good reason to play around with the tool, regardless of how good the tutorial is. For example, Phil, your links are very informative, but are simply displays of what Poser's magnets are capable of. Now, a tutorial on how to use Poser's magnets to add the "ThighWide" morph to a pair of pants that don't have them, would in the end (IMHO) be more useful to people, and probably encourage them to try using magnets on other clothing items/morphs.

Not to knock them, because they're great clothes, but almost all of the clothing I've gotten from the merchant Xena have almost no morphs, meaning I have to pretty much use the default character body with the clothing. I'd love a tutorial that showed me how to use magnets to apply morphs to clothing so I could use that knowledge on her clothes.

Maybe it's not that we need a tutorial on what magnets do, but on how to use them in a useful manner.

Would using them to make your own clothing in Poser be useful?

Yeah.

Never thought of using them for that.

I've used magnets alot, when getting free figures that didn't have any morphs. saves me the trouble of buying the morphs. it's a good service providing tutorials on how to use them. however, most users probably avoid magnets, reading tutorials on magnets, reading the manual, etc. :lol:

I feel I know magnets better than average. I've used magnets since P4. I mostly use them to fix and adjust things.

I wish every character came in twos. One with the dials and a verison that was empty of dials except still had all its JCMs. Then after dialing and spawning I could shoot all the spawned MTs to the empty version. (it sucks when I accidentally deleted JCMs while manualy cleaning out the extra dials/MTs)

Of course a script that asked the name of the spawned MTs then shot them all over all at once to the empty verison of the character would be great to. :D

Instead of using Mags for putting in clothing morphs, I'm afraid I use Netherworks kit!

Now you're probably going to tell me that it uses magnets to do it and yea maybe, but I don't have to !!

See, LAZY!!!      [lol]

That said, that bit about making my own clothing items did pique my interest!!

I have Shade for modelling but don't have the time to learn that as well and when I did try to use it, I was crap at it!  [rofl].

Making clothes is good.

How adept are you at using them?
Do you use them frequently?
Would you use them if only you knew how?

I'm not adept at all with using magnets. To answer both question two and three, yes I would use them if I knew how.  I understand the principle behind them but the few times I tried them I didn't come close to moving what I was aiming for.

Thank you for the tutorials! I had a chance to look at the flash one and as soon as I saw the wireframed ball I thought, "Aha! That makes it so much easier to figure out."

very nice tutorials...i love the animations on them.

i just got into magnets about 3 months ago, and now i don't do anything without them.  i wish that all of our work was done with magnets...once set up, you can just make them invis and remember the name to pull them out of props.  don't even have to see the magnet, just pull or twist it.  i wish that the groups that the morphs were created from were saved and magnets left intact.  magnet control instead of morph control would be much much more precise and much much more flexible. 

i guess what i mean is, hard structure should be morph, but movement and expression should be magnet

About 30%/70%.  I love morphs and then cook'em with magnets.  I make morphs in Wings and smooth'em with magnets.  I use morphs preloaded, then use magnets to tweak them.

I use morphs more than magnets, though.  More tutorials on useful thingies to make things with is always liked by me! Wheeeeeeeee!

I like clothes with morphs and never touch magnets, well only very occasionally. And i do have WTB universal magic mags which are very useful at times. Love esther

I use magnets all the time. I make most of my jcms and body morphs for clothing with them. They really aren't that hard to use once you get past the idea that you have to use the default mag zone and position.

Magnets can be very friendly if you are willing to take the time to learn how to use them and aren't afraid of making a mistake. I make them all the time..... just delete the magnet and start over

Ed

I love using magnets, but still need to call you about the Mag-Test Multi-Render.PY I was interested in having you write for me!

Spending a while setting up a Zone, in just the right place, is fun; but then testing each parameter, as many times over, to make sure you are always getting the most out of your Magnet Sets is very time consuming.

A script to do a set of 10 of these renders all at once would be so super!

=  )

I'm using magnets more now, thanks to your (and Dr. Geep's) tutorials.  Also, Poser Toolbox has been a tremendous help.

Well, Phil, magnets and I have a history. A bad one. LOL! I have only been able to use them successfully after fiddling and guessing for lengthy periods of time. I usually have tried to use them for clothes fixes like something tearing, and once to correct something on a character's face. But it was almost always difficult.

I viewed your tutorial and then I understood why it had been so painful. My problem was with the zones. I knew that everything inside the zone would be affected; but I never knew until watching your video that I could change its appearance. When the zone is just a white ring, it can be much harder to judge how much of the area is actually inside the zone. So thank you for that.

Another thing was something I'm kinda embarrassed to admit, but I'm going to say anyway. I thought (until watching your video), that I had to have the magnet itself smack dab against whatever it was going to alter. lol, I feel so stupid just saying that. So I would spend lots of unnecessary time maneuvering the magnet base so that it was just about kissing whatever I was trying to change. But we'll keep that between us.

As for how frequently I use them, I have "resorted" to them quite often, but always with a grimace. "Oh. I'm going to have to use a magnet!" And then I knew it was going to be a bad day. LOL!  I love what magnets can do, and now that I have seen your tutorial, you have relieved me of quite a burden. So glad to know I can eliminate those extra steps, and that the zone issue is easily solved.

Thanks for that, Phil !